Where to watch Doctor Strange (2016)

Trivia & production notes

• A Doctor Strange film script from 1986 by Bob Gale never progressed beyond the initial development stage at New World Pictures.
• In 1989, director Alex Cox co-wrote a Doctor Strange script with Stan Lee that would have featured the villain Dormammu on Easter Island in Chile.
• Producer Charles Band's attempt to make a Doctor Strange film at Full Moon Entertainment was abandoned when his option on the property expired, leading him to develop the concept into the 1992 film Doctor Mordrid instead.
• The rights to Doctor Strange passed through multiple studios over 15 years before Marvel Studios acquired them from Miramax Films in 2005 as part of the studio's effort to independently produce its own films.
• Guillermo del Toro and Neil Gaiman pitched a 2007 version of Doctor Strange that would have set the character as an alcoholic, disbarred physician in the late 1920s living in Greenwich Village for 90 years without aging, heavily inspired by Steve Ditko's artwork.
• Scott Derrickson spent what he described as an "obnoxious amount" of his own money to create a 12-page scene with concept art, storyboards, and an animatic for a 90-minute pitch to Marvel, which the studio later purchased and incorporated as one of the film's main set pieces.
• Marvel told Scott Derrickson that more people had lobbied to direct Doctor Strange than any of their other films at that time.
• Jon Spaihts persisted in getting hired as screenwriter after an initial rejection, instructing his agent to call Marvel back and request another meeting, which eventually secured him the job without Marvel considering any other writers.
• Scott Derrickson initially wanted Nightmare as the film's main villain and considered nightmares as a separate dimension, but Kevin Feige decided Dormammu would be more suitable to avoid overloading viewers with new concepts.
• Doctor Strange production lasted roughly from the mid-1980s through 2014 in various development stages across studios including New World Pictures, Regency, Full Moon Entertainment, Columbia Pictures, Dimension Films, Miramax Films, and finally Marvel Studios.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Doctor Strange (2016 film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.